Cubox [Part 3]: + Asterisk 1.8 .. fully operational

As mentioned I rebuilt the Cubox with Debian 'squeeze' and got mpd running (see previous post). The bigger hurdle for me was to get Asterisk running and complete migration of an old Centos / Trixbox set-up .. Centos was just too awkward for me.

Failing

I began fooling around trying to migrate the config from the Trixbox server to the default Asterisk config files that came installed via apt-get on squeeze. Whilst both were 1.6 I realised the Trixbox ones were quite modified in set-up by use of freepbx gui to configure them. I got to the point where I was coping over the php agi scripts to find they weren't php5 compliant ... OK this isn't going to work cleanly .. back it up.

Thinking about it:
I'm actually pretty happy with freepbx I just don't want the Centos that Trixbox comes with
My Asterisk config is actually pretty simple

1. 1 x IAX2 trunk 
2. 1 x SIP trunk 
3. 1 x out-/in-bound routes 
4. 1 x Ring Group (ring all extensions .. in NO ANSWER hand over to VM IVR) 
5. 1 x VM IVR (leave message for whom?) 
6. 3 x Extensions (2000 - Dect phone, 2001 - Me, 2002 - Mrs and more to follow I'm sure) 

.. so decided to change tack.

One months 2talk's VoIP service < One days parking in Wellington city

Looking at bank statements this just caught my eye .. crazy how relative costs pan out.

Base rate for a fixed IP and SIP trunk = $11.50.

Early bird Wilsons Car-park in Upper Willis Street Wellington = $12.

Android 2.3.4 SIP stack disconnects?

Now that I've moved to NDSL and VOIP for calling I can (via Trixbox) route all inbound calls to a calling group including everyone connected (i.e. everyones Android mobile sip client + the analogue phone via a Linksys / Cisco SPA2102).

That said some I found the Android SIP stack very limiting in that calls drop sounds and then disconnect after a short period of time (maybe 30s - 1 minute). Hunting the Internet I find mention of similar problems with links to resolution [1]. Something to try in the next few days (will update if it resolves my problem).

[1] http://forum.sipsorcery.com/viewtopic.php?t=3029&p=18029#p18098

Migrating to Naked DSL + VOIP

Been a bit quiet lately but some major changes at home to tackle the phone / Internet bills (going down to 1 income has it's issues). Phone line ported to 2talk.co.nz which worked out very sweet. Loving the ability to control calls as and when needed, etc.

So along with 2talk 10 ($10 /month package) we're taking up snap.net.nz's offer for $55 5GB base plan with $2 /month all you eat Google+Youtube.com. Worth a crack. Also by dropping my cell package down a notch I've almosty halved the comms bill. Will update with progress.